As a coworker, professional, and busy person first — athlete second — one of the biggest challenges you face on a daily and weekly basis is getting your workouts done. More often than not, your day will conspire against you, leaving you just enough time to realize that you don’t have enough time to work out. So how do you sort through the clutter? How do you look at a training plan that has 17 workouts for a week and decide which one to do next? Or which one to skip?
The 10 hours a week training methodology addresses this issue by starting with the key workouts first. Each weekly template has sent workouts for swim, bike, and run that are “must do” workouts. In other words, if you’re able to get these workouts done just staying aerobic on the other days is good enough.
If you’re not following the 10 hours Approach right now, then you have to take some time to determine which workouts are the right workouts for you. Here’s how you do it (note: all of this is included in the first half of the PDF file – a free download):
1. Zoom Out – Before you can pick a workout, you have to have a bigger context for understanding how this workout fits into your training. The first thing I recommend you look at is your next race. How far away is it? How long is it? Is it a challenging course or an easy one? Take a second to compose a brief one paragraph description of your race, as this will help you with your planning. For example, “my next race is two weeks away. It is a moderately challenging Olympic distance race, with a lake swim, a hilly bike, and a flat run around the lake. It’s typically hot in August so I need to be ready for that. I raced this event last year and I definitely want to go faster.”
2. Get Personal – Now that you have a better understanding of the race, it’s time to take a good look at what you bring to the table. In other words, if your next race is hilly and you are not a good hill climber, you need to figure something out. If you know the racial be hot, it’s time to start practicing your nutrition strategy. Take a few seconds to describe yourself, being honest with your ability levels in each discipline.
3. Bring It Together – Using the 10,000 foot view of the race and the birds eye view of your abilities, it’s time to look at your workout schedule. If possible, have a printed version of your workout schedule available for you to edit by hand. I recommend you have two pens — no, make that three pens… each a different color. Take 10 number one in circle all the workouts between now and the next race that are important based upon the event description you completed in step one. And take the second pen in circle the workouts that cover areas that you need to work on (i.e., hill climbing). Now you should have a calendar with several workouts in each week circles, some for the race and some for you. Using a third pen pic three workouts in each week where either (A) the race conditions in your personal focus points intersect (that’s a no-brainer!), and if that’s not enough, then (B) pick a workout from your set of personal limiters.
Once you’ve completed this exercise, you will have a workout calendar that gives you a first-hand glimpse at the workouts you must get the period to yourself a favor and sit down the beginning of each week and schedule these workouts into your calendar so you know that they’ll get done. Everything else is gravy, and you don’t have to sweat it if the boss decides to drop a project on you at 4:55 p.m.
Happy training!
Hi, I'm Patrick McCrann. 
